The following article is from the March, 1961, edition of the ‘Revivalist’, the Free Presbyterian Church magazine back then!
The writer would have been its editor, the late Dr Ian Paisley, then in his spiritual prime.
‘He being dead yet speaketh’ for the article pointedly deals with the very issue that has been highlighted in a recent article of mine:
Unambiguous witness or an uncertain sound — which?
Rev Samuel Fitton uncovered the article and kindly forwarded it to me.
The name of our official magazine was changed some years ago and that is not all that has changed since those days!!!!
We would never see a front page like that of March 1961 or the likes of the article I am reproducing, in our magazines today!
Dear Christian, read it, learn where we Free Presbyterians once stood and what we once rejoiced in and pray for a return to those paths!
Sincerely in Christ’s name,
Rev Ivan Foster (Rtd)
On Contending for the Faith
(The Revivalist, March 1961)
May the Lord restore to our ranks again such bold challenging of the ecumenical compromisers and deliver us from dotingly traipsing after them!
In this easy going age the spirit of the devil is so strong that many Christians are being deceived by his lying propaganda, and the result is that the professing Church of Christ finds in its ranks a bunch of spineless jellyfish, who, for peace’s sake and in order to show, so they say, the spirit of love, would open the gates of heaven to the old Devil himself. This false spirit of compromise has opened the gates of the Church to her sworn enemies, and today the Church has lost its zeal and energy for the conflict. Many Christians remain silent and allow our Lord Jesus to be insulted by the Devil’s brats, for if they protested they would lose their reputation and their ungodly friends. How often is God’s truth sacrificed on the altar of our reputation?
In the General Assembly of the Irish Presbyterian Church many Christians sit in such silence and because of what men think or say betray the Eternal verities of the Gospel. That is their notion of contending for “The Faith”. They mouth about fighting inside, but they do not fight, but fraternise. If they fought they would soon find that, like all the Reformers, they were not wanted, and would be cast out. May God deliver us from the leadership of such evangelicals.
Contending behind closed doors.
Another class of Christians, carried away at times with their own oratory, give out as if they were wonderful defenders off the faith. They talk much when the doors are shut fast. They talk as if Luther and Calvin where Tom Thumbs compared with them. When, however, the open stand must be taken, when their own party or church must be condemned, then the fire leaves their spirit. In the tents of the camp they are champions; on the battlefield, despicable cowards. When the price is to be paid they won’t cough up a cent. They pay lip service to the stand they have taken but they are not standing now.
These poor folks talk a lot about methods and will debate about tactics until the ground is lost, the conflict over and the enemy successful. They can’t about ‘the spirit of the meek and lowly Jesus’, but their meaning for meek and lowly is ‘milk and water’ – a convenient interpretation for couch-loving non-combatants. Into the open to bear reproach, they will not come. They rejoice that none of the modernistic riddled denominations have banned them from their pulpits. They feel quite happy to sit with ministers who support modernism. They will even cast their votes against an ‘aggressive’ brother who will fight the modernists, and, when challenged, explain their deceitful actions by saying, “He does the right thing in the wrong way”
Thank God, however, for those who will publicly contend for the faith. How these gallant souls encourage us to go forward in the fight. How God honours a clean-cut witness, and adds to such a witness, souls for whom Christ died. God help us to contend for the faith. Read the book of Nehemiah.